My experiences with Free Open Source Software

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WebTops ‘2010

Jaya Engineering College, Chennai conducted an awesome conference on “Web Technologies and Open Source“, last Saturday.

1. Drupal for Digital Media2. Web Development with Ruby On Rails3. security for web Applications4. Making your own OS5. Virtualization using Open Source

These are the talks. Speakers done their best to explain the things to the young students.

I have some thoughts on giving public talks.

1.Know the audience:Know the level of the audience. If they do not know what you are talking, don’t explain too much. Just explain the basics and ask them to explore the things.

2.Show some demo:A simple demo will make the audience interested rather than watching a long slideshow. A drupal demo / Xen virtualisation would have got a great enthusiasm from the students.

3. Be some interactive :Walk to the students. Dont stand on the stage itself. when we walk and reach people, they will answer our questions.

4. Students are yet to learn lot of things:Students do not know as we know. When we give a talk to them, we should bring them along with us. Just introduce the new topics, Show some demo, give some tasks to them, show some websites. They are like kids. We have to teach them like teaching how to walk to a kid.

5. Dont kill them with slide:Dont kill the audience with lengthy, verbose, texy slides. Give little texts. Have more images.Watch this presentation and change all your slides.

6.Know where to stop:Dont go through all your slides. Read the minds of the audience. Learn their body languages. If they feel boring, stop the slide and have some funny activities.

7. Use OpenOffice ODP or PDF:When you give a talk to a opensource conference, make sure that you show a OpenOffice Impress Presentation in ODP format or PDF format. Making a show with MS Powerpoint and asking apologies wont catch the minds of the audience.

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Yes. Organizing a talk to the students regarding opensource is tough. They simply sit and stare the stage, counting the time or playing with mobile or chat or a nap.

We work hard to bring open source to the student community. our hard work should not go vein because of the simple mistakes we do.

The presenters at WebTops did their best and worked hard to reach the students. The above said suggestions will make their life easier and make sure that they reach the young minds.

Thanks for Mr.Kumaran, Jaya Foss Club and the entire team for organizing this wonderful event.